Left-leaning activists Don and Regina "Sunshine" Hooper have indicated aggravation to friends and family over what they call "harmful" and "rebellious" actions of their son, Brock, a Republican who is currently attending business school at Ball State.

The Hooper elders say that although they love their son, his conservative actions cut to the very heart of their hopes and expectations, openly defying the values that they spent years imparting onto their only child.

"We had hoped that he would be a wonderful performance artist -- maybe an expert at hoopla hoops or devil sticks or something," said Brock's father, Don. "I can't say where it all began to go bad, but I distinctly remember the first time he cut his hair short. That really made us wonder what we had done wrong as parents."

Despite dutifully bringing their child, then 7, with them on the Grateful Dead's summer of 1995 tour, and letting him spend his teenage years without "harmful social constructs" like a curfew, the Hoopers have been repeatedly shocked by their son's acts of defiance against them, such as putting a McCain/Palin bumper sticker on his car, going to church, and openly preferring traditional jazz to jam bands and sitar music.

The couple attempted to reach the troubled child, but the elder Hooper says that nothing seemed to work.

"We tried giving him guitar lessons, but that went nowhere -- he just ended up playing the same few Lynyrd Skynyrd songs over and over," lamented Mr. Hooper. "Yoga for teens? That was a bust. Face-painting summer camp? Let's just say I never thought I'd see my only son's face all dolled up to look like an American flag."

Hooper's mother expressed hope that her son's enthusiasm for the Republican Party and his conservative choice of dress and appearance is just a phase, and not a lasting lifestyle choice.

"I was so embarrassed when he came home one night when Don and I were throwing a party with some friends, and all he was wearing was a shirt, tie, and loafers," said the young right-winger's mother, "but I know he's still young and highly emotional. He'll probably come around once he sees that everything that Republicans do is wrong, and he'll look back on this time of his life with a bit of a laugh. We all had fads in our lives where silly things just seemed so important, but in the end, we realized how meaningless they were, which I hope is how he someday sees his obsession to be rich and clean-cut."

"That's not how things work in our household, and I'll never know where he got it from," added Mrs. Hooper.

Brock Hooper himself remains openly rebellious against his parents' super-mellow, uninhibited lifestyle, and criticizes them for the way he was raised.

"I wasn't sent to my room once," lamented the young Hooper. "If I did something wrong, we just did a family meditation, and if I failed a test at school, they took me to the park to play without any punishment or recourse."

"I'll never forgive them for that," he said bitterly.

Hooper can only recall getting in serious trouble once: "when I repeated something I heard at school and used, uh, the 'n-word'. That got me sent to the DuSable Museum of African-American History for 'sensitivity lessons', but maybe if they had done something mean, then I would have actually learned something form the experience. Instead, now I find that I don't really like black people, except for maybe Alan Keyes."